I have been a subscriber to MRVP since it pretty much began, but there is nothing of interest anymore. I miss things like Rehab my Railroad (using an individuals layout, not the MR employees layout) and pretty much any project railroad. David Popp even seems to be missing…and Kathy Millatt…and Jenny Freeland…
What the heck is going on? Nothing to get my attention, that’s for sure. Certainly not worth 60 bucks a year.
Chuck,
I also have been a subscriber since the beginning. Over the last year, particularly the last few months, MRVP has really gone downhill.
Until recently, the production quality was outstanding. But the audio on some parts of the MR&T episodes of Rehab My Railroad is abysmal! Some episodes have a thrumming sound permeating the entire thing! Certainly not professional quality programming!
And some (better) content appears to have been supplanted by the now twice-monthly Inside Cody’s Office. That’s pretty certainly easier (and cheaper) to produce than most of the other content, but it’s a poor substitute for the greater variety they used to offer.
For the first few years, MRVP posted new content roughly every other business day - Monday, Wednesday, Friday one week, then Tuesday and Thursday the next. Has anyone else noticed that the frequency has gone way down? Some weeks there’s only one new episode of something, and occasionally it seems not even that. Even if you count the sponsored infomercial videos. Is this the MRVP version of the slimming down of MR?
About the only thing promising to me right now is Gerry Leone’s new series Back on Track.
Hopefully the slowdown in production is mostly Covid-related, and will be back up to normal over the next few months. I’m pretty sceptical of that, however.
My subscription extends to the second half of 2022, and if things continue as they have over the last few months, that will be the end of it.
Thanks for the reply, Mark! Glad to hear I’m not the only one that thinks this.
I’m also skeptical that it will improve. However, I sure hope that it does. Once upon a time, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, not so much.
$60 a year? I’m paying $2.25 a month. MRVP only, no archive (I have the 75 year DVD, I have no need of the archive). Does seem to be a drop off in video volume lately. No Insider, no Ask MRVP for a while.
Not really worried about which layout they use for Rehab - while it was a home layout before, it was an MR employee. And then Kent’s garden railroad. Don’t see what the big deal is using the MR&T. The point of the series is taking some old stuff on a layout and making it new.
What’s more annoying about it is using MRVP content for step by step in the magazine. That’s 4 or so pages I skip every month - I’ve already seen that.
–Randy
Who knows… they might be under work from home orders due to covid…
Tried watching model train videos, just can’t do it, bores me silly.
Never subscribed, doubt I ever will.
Sheldon
I agree with you, Sheldon. After watching them for a minute or so, that is enough.
I personally prefer to look at pictures and see if there is anything I like that can be adapted on my layout.
David
I don’t subscribe to MRVP, but from what I am reading here, this does not seem to bode well for Kalmbach, or at least its MRVP series. Maybe Covid-19 is to blame since everyone is working from home. Or, it could be another nail in the coffin.
If Kalmbach pubications and video services are going downhill, we forum members may find eventually find ourselves without a home. Maybe it is time to start a Kalmbach Rescue Forum. [:^)]
Specific to MRVP, maybe Kalmbach should consider a “citizen review board” of sorts, whereby some subscribers could be selected to express their views directly to Kalmbach on how to improve the video series.
Rich
I was a subscriber on MRVP from the beginning also. My subscription was up after the 4th year anniversary I believe.
I subscribe one year later, since I missed the videos. When you need to out source people on YouTube and everything else. The product will decline.
That was the last time I subscribed.
MRVP started out like gangbusters when it was new, and it seemed to be well on the way to living up to former MR editor Russ Larson’s prediction (back at MR’s 1984 50th anniversary convention in Milwaukee) that screen and video would replace print – not supplement, replace. There are so many things about our hobby that are a challenge to describe in prose and relatively easy to show or demonstrate on video (or live, if you can find a way to let everybody actually see what’s going on up front at a clinic). Hand laying track is a classic example. Zip texturing scenery is another.
Currently I write two regular columns on model railroading subjects and one regular column on prototype railroading. One of those columns has been going on for well over a decade and I know well the fear of running out of things to say that are new and not repeats – what might be called the Lionel Strang syndrome, after the talented modeler and MR columnist who wrote some nice stuff for a few years, probably a storehouse of pent up ideas and techniques, and then you noticed the desperation and the bloating to full column length of trivial ideas, or minor variations on older ones. Now and then Tony Koester’s column seems to suffer from this too, but then suddenly he’ll have a fresh burst of inspiration. It is actually amazing how long he’s kept that column going.
From time to time I think Cody suffers from trying to think up a new workbench tip or technique and MRVP is in danger of over-exposure there. I hope not.
Some of the MRVP “outside” talent leaves me cold, and the toy train stuff is of zero interest to me, in addition to sometimes being squirm-inducingly juvenile. I also got the sense that things were being lengthened and prolonged just to fill up time.
And all that was happening well before coronavirus.
Still,
This is happening with the competition too. There are two reasons for this, first there is very little new under the sun, a lot of what we think is new is just being documented for the first time. Second the longer you are in this hobby, the better your skills, soon you don’t need the info. Though there are new people arriving in this hobby, we are getting educated faster and faster so that the bored far outpace the new.